Roy Hodgson is planning to give Raheem Sterling his chance to stake a claim for a starting place in the World Cup by playing him in an experimental line-up in their penultimate warm-up match before the tournament begins. Sterling will form part of a new-look team against Ecuador in Miami on Wednesday, with Ross Barkley and Luke Shaw also pencilled in to start.

Hodgson’s intention is to change his entire XI from Friday’s 3-0 win against Peru at Wembley and that will mean Sterling getting the opportunity to show he can have the same impact for England as he did for Liverpool in the second half of the Premier League season.

A good performance could conceivably embolden Hodgson to keep him in the team, having preferred Danny Welbeck against Peru, but England’s manager is also warning that it would be wrong to expect too much of a player of 19.

“He’s a good player and I’m sure he’s going to be a very big player for England going forward as well, but at the moment I would rather like to see some of these younger players treated with a little bit more caution,” he said.

“I think it’s very dangerous to start building them up and saying: ‘England are going to do terrifically well because of them.’ There are a lot of other players in our squad who are going to have to take responsibility and hopefully they [the younger players] will come in on the back of it and put the icing on the cake.”

The squad flew out to Miami on Sunday after Hodgson had spent the previous evening watching Italy, England’s opponents in Manaus on 14 June, draw 0-0 with the Republic of Ireland in a friendly at Craven Cottage.

The Football Association has chosen Florida because of the heat and humidity and Ecuador, in Group B at the World Cup, should be more challenging opponents than Peru. England then play Honduras on Saturday, also in Miami, before flying to Rio straight after the match.

“Our plan on Wednesday is basically to start the people who didn’t start on Friday,” Hodgson said. “We’ve got two more matches. Wednesday will be an opportunity for me to start the others and then by Saturday we have all of them having played and ready. Then I’ll have to make a decision over who does play.”

Hodgson’s planning means Jack Wilshere is in line to start his first match since March. Phil Jones and Chris Smalling will be in defence, while Shaw will take over from Leighton Baines at left-back. Frank Lampard will captain the side, Rickie Lambert will start in attack and Ben Foster and James Milner are also expected to begin the match.

Sterling could be used on either flank, or behind Lambert, and Hodgson said he had not yet decided where the teenager was most effective. “Friday was only his third appearance and it would be stupid for me to say on the basis of just a few minutes: ‘Raheem Sterling, this is his best position.’ I’m not even certain I want Raheem to have a best position necessarily. I want Raheem to be able to play in the position where we need him.

“On Friday we thought it would be good to bring him on initially in the position behind the front player, in behind Danny Welbeck, where we’ve seen him play well. But then we wanted to bring on Ross Barkley so we moved him wide and he did OK there. What you can say is that in those areas we have enormous competition. It was good to see against Peru that the two I chose, Welbeck and [Adam] Lallana, I felt both had very good games.”

Hodgson added: “I’ve been very happy with the two training camps, very happy indeed, and I was very happy with the way the players took the work we’ve been doing into the game on Friday. But I’m wary, too, about stating something that can create enormous headlines. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. There are two more weeks before we play Italy, two more weeks of work to put in, for players to keep their form, improve their form, knock on the door even louder and I’m looking forward to that. I would be lying if I said the last two weeks had gone anything other than exactly as I wanted.”